With more clinics being offered, flu anxiety eases

Maggy Hejlek was excited she didn’t have to spend her entire afternoon in line for her H1N1 vaccination.

“This is great,” said Hejlek, a 20-year-old Creighton University pharmacy student. “I was expecting a lot longer line. It’s like a five-minute wait.”

Phil Rooney, a spokesman for the Douglas County Health Department, said 3,457 H1N1 vaccinations were administered Saturday at the Omaha Civic Auditorium, with most people waiting less than 15 minutes to get the free shot.

Some people have waited in lines at recent flu clinics in the Omaha area for at least three hours.

“It seems like there’s less anxiety or less urgency (to get the vaccination) because people are seeing more clinics out there,” Rooney said.

Saturday’s six-hour clinic gave people a larger window of opportunity to get vaccinated, he said, rather than a four-hour clinic during the week.

“People realize they don’t have to get in line at 4 in the morning to get into a clinic,” Rooney said.

Lines did get long at times, with waits reaching about 90 minutes, he said.

About 1,100 immunizations were administered within the first two hours of the clinic. Rooney said the Health Department was prepared to administer 5,000 vaccinations.

So far, health officials have asked that recipients be in high-risk groups: pregnant women, health care workers, caregivers for infants, people ages 6 months through 24 years and people ages 25 through 64 with chronic health conditions.

Rooney said he hopes the immunizations can be offered to the general public in about a month, although it will ultimately depend on how quickly vaccines are manufactured.

The next H1N1 clinics in Douglas County will be Wednesday at Bennington High School, 16610 Bennington Road, and Nov. 23 at Millard North High School, 1010 S. 144th St. Both will be from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Contact the writer:

444-1336, leia.baez@owh.com

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